On 04/10/05, anders smith <4nders at gmail.com> wrote:
> how do I interpret loadaverage on mythtv backendstatus page or when running
> top?
> I usually get numbers around 4, but is that good or bad (when grabbing and
> inserting it runs up to 6)?
Adrian Cockcroft's definition: The load average is the sum of the run
queue length and the number of jobs currently running on the CPUs.
How it was explained to me: a load of 1 means there's an average of 1
job running on the system; an average of 2 means 1 job is running and
one is waiting (so the system is nicely charged). This is for a
single-CPU system. A load to on a dual-cpu system means on average
both CPU's have 1 job running and none are waiting.
So the general rule could be: load = 2 x number of cpu's means the
system is nicely charged. Higher means there are more jobs waiting to
be run (so you lack a bit CPU power). If you get spikes that's ok but
if your load is constantly 4 it would seem your system is lacking CPU
power.
N.